the top edge.
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5m. Now, let’s apply all this distortion of foreshortened circles to a curling flag. This exercise will be directly transferred to the rose. Draw
another flagpole.
5n. Draw the two guide dots, and draw the three-quarter foreshortened circle curling toward you.
5m
5q
5o. Begin spiraling the foreshortened circle
inward.
5p. Complete the foreshortened circle spiral.
Stretch out the ends, and always curve the mid-
dle in close. We will also be discussing this when we draw water ripples in a later lesson.
5q. Draw the thickness of the vertical sides of the flag.
5r
5n
5r. Curve the bottom of the near edge of the flag a bit more than the curve you have drawn on the top edge above.
5s. Push that back line up, and curve it away
.
from your eye.
5t. Draw the all-important peeking lines from
each of the inside edges. This is definitely the BAM moment of this drawing, the one instantly
5s
5o
defining moment when a drawing suddenly pops
into the third dimension.
5u. Draw in some very dark nook and cranny shadows. Generally, the more little cracks, crevices, nooks, and crannies that you can pour some
shadow into, the more depth you create in your
drawing. Complete the blended shading.
5p
5t
5u
LESSON 9: THE ROSE
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I know that was quite a bit of a warm-up exercise for this one drawing lesson. Good job on your patient cooperation in drawing the bowl and the three separate flags. We will now use the techniques you just learned to draw a rose.
6. Draw a foreshortened
7. Draw a guide dot in the
8. Begin to spiral out the rose
bowl, and add a stem.
middle of the rose bowl
petal with three-quarters of a
(get the pun?).
foreshortened circle.
9. Keep spiraling, and keep
10. Complete the spiral at
11. Draw the center thickness of
these spiraled foreshortened
the center of the petal.
the rose petal and the first peek-
circles squished. It’s the dis-
Erase the extra line.
ing thickness line. We are almost
torted shape that will form the
at the BAM moment.
three-dimensional rosebud.
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12. Draw the next outer
13. Draw the remaining
14. Draw in the very dark,
peeking line.
thickness line. BAM! There
very small, nook and cranny
it is—depth focused on our
shadows. Notice I even
beautiful rose.
darkened a shadow along
the edge of the rose petal.
15. Place the light source in the top right, and blend the shading on each of the curved surfaces opposite. Draw a few thorns on the stem, and draw the leaves.
LESSON 9: THE ROSE
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Lesson 9: Bonus Challenge
Take a look at my sketchbook page to get inspired to draw an entire bouquet.
Try to draw this six-rose bouquet on your own. If you really like this six-rose bouquet lesson, check out the twenty-minute video tutorial on my website, www.markkistler.com.
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Student examples
Look at these wonderful student drawings of this lesson, and get inspired to practice! Draw! Draw! Draw!
By Michael Lane
By Tracy Powers
By Marnie Ross
LESSON 9: THE ROSE
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L E S S O N 1 0
THE CYLINDER
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In previous lessons we conquered the sphere and several variations of the sphere. We confidently drew the cube and several variations of the cube. In this lesson we will conquer another building block: the cylinder.
1. Draw two guide dots for
2. Draw a foreshortened circle.
3. Draw the sides of the
your foreshortened circle.
cylinder with two vertical
parallel lines.
4. Curve the bottom of the cylinder,
making sure to curve the bottom a bit
more than the corresponding curve at
the top. This bottom curve uses two
key drawing concepts, size and place-
5. To draw the back two cylinders,
ment, simultaneously.
position the foreshortened circle
guide dots above and to the left of
the top center of the first cylinder.
6. Complete the
foreshortened circle.
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7. Draw the sides of the second cylinder.
The right side tucks behind the first cylin-
der, using overlapping, which creates the
visual illusion of depth.
8. Curve the bottom of the second cylinder. Be
sure to push this line up and behind the first
closer cylinder. The natural tendency is to draw this line connecting to the bottom corner of the first cylinder. I don’t know why, but most students do this over and over again. You can see
where I put a line placement guide dot on the
left side of the near cylinder.
9. Begin the third cylinder with
two foreshortened circle guide
dots off the top center right of the
first cylinder.
10. Draw the foreshortened circle.
Notice how my second row of
cylinders is a bit smaller than the
first cylinder. Complete the third
cylinder using overlapping, size,
and placement.
LESSON 10: THE CYLINDER
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11. Draw the horizon line,
and position your light
source. I like to begin my
shading process by darken-
ing all of the small dark
12. Complete this drawing of
three cylinders. Add cast shad-
ows, opposite your light source,
using blended shading. Make
sure to use a direction SW guide
line to place your cast shadows
correctly.
Lesson 10: Bonus Challenge
Okay, now we are ready to start applying our drawing lessons to the real world. Go into your kitchen, and find three soup cans, three soda cans, or three coffee mugs, all of the same size. Arrange the objects on the kitchen table in the same positions that we have just drawn them.
Sit down in a chair in front of your still life. Notice how the tops of the cans are not nearly as foreshortened as we have drawn them. This is because your
eye level is much higher than where we imagined it to be in our picture. Push yourself back from the table a bit, and lower your eye level until the tops of the cans match the foreshortening that we have drawn. Experiment with your eye level, moving your eyes even lower until you can’t see the tops of the cans. This is a glimpse of two-point perspective that I will be getting to in a later lesson.
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Now, stand up and watch what happens to the
foreshortened can tops. They expand; they open
up to near full circles depending on where your eye level is.
Understanding the Nine Fundamental Laws of
Drawing will give you the skill to draw objects you see in the world around you or that you create in your imagination in any position. Now grab nine cans or mugs (varying sizes are okay). Position them in any way you want on one end of the
kitchen table. Sit at the other end of the kitchen table with your sketchbook and pencil. Look at
your still life. Draw what you see. Feel free to place a box under your cans to raise them to a
higher, more foreshortened perspective.
As you draw what you see, you will recognize
the words that you have been learning in these
lessons. You will begin to discover how these Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing truly apply to seeing and drawing the real world in 3-D in your
sketchbook.
Here is an important point: In every three-
dimensional drawing you create from your
imagination or from the real world, you will always apply two or more of the Nine Laws every time,
without exception. In this lesson we applied foreshortening, overlapping, placement, size, shading, and shadow.
Photos by Jonathan Little
LESSON 10: THE CYLINDER
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Student examples
Take a look at how student
Susan Kozloski explored changing
the eye level in her drawings.
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L E S S O N 1 1
ADVANCED-LEVEL
CYLINDERS
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In this lesson I will explore the fun visual effect of drawing multiple cylinders in a cityscape scene. The skills we will be practicing in this drawing are overlapping, foreshortening, blended shading, shadows, and nook and cranny shading. While practicing these skills, we will also push the envelope and expand our understanding of the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing. Look at the lesson illustration on the previous page.
Everything looks fine and organized according to the Nine Laws. However, take a closer look at the lowest cylin-
å
drical tower. It is much smaller than the surrounding towers, so according to our understanding of the laws, it should appear farther away. Yes? This is an example of how some design laws have more visual power than others.
The lowest smaller cylindrical tower appears closer because it is overlapping in front of the other much larger towers.
Interesting, isn’t it? Overlapping will always trump size.
Here’s a mindbender. Look at the two hovering cylinders. The larger one could be closer or farther away. We don’t have any reference as to its position. It is not over-
ç
lapping an object to pull it closer; it is not casting a shadow to indicate that it is directly above or next to an object. In this situation, its size doesn’t give us any indication of its position. Now in comparison, look at the smaller hovering cylinder over on the left. Because it is overlapping the other tower and casting a shadow, we can determine it is closer.
If I had drawn the center hovering disk a tiny bit in front of a tower, or a tiny bit behind a tower, I would have given the viewer a context of where the disk was, thus eliminating a confusing optical illusion.
é
Understanding these relationships among the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing will help you effectively and confidently resolve positioning problems in your illustrations. We will learn more about how to position your objects to alleviate depth ambiguity when we draw clouds, trees, and two-point perspective cities in later lessons.
Now let’s draw!
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1. Draw a large picture frame, taking up an entire page of your sketchbook. Sometimes it’s fun to place your drawing inside a drawn frame like I did in my sketchbook drawings of the koala, the spheres, and these towers.
2. Using guide dots, draw the first foreshortened circle.
3. Draw more foreshortened circles, some large, some small.
4. As you continue to draw more foreshortened circles, be ê
sure to place some high in the frame.
5. Draw a few more foreshortened circles positioned slightly out of the frame. These peeking towers have a nice visual effect. A few of my students have gone on to illustrate for DC Comics and Marvel Comics. When I’ve had the privilege of speaking with them over the years, I’ve always picked their brains for techniques to share with my students. Probably the most valuable tidbit I’ve heard over and over again is to position objects slightly off frame. For example, when working on Spiderman or The Hulk, these ë
artists will draw the character moving into the frame or moving out of the frame with just partial views, such as an arm, a shoulder, and an edge of the face.
6. Draw vertical sides down from the lowest foreshortened circle. When you are drawing full scene pictures like this, it is always a good idea to detail in the lowest objects first.
í
ing segment of Star Trek: The Next Generation or a space scene from Star Wars). Another scenario would be if you were drawing a flock of birds in flight. The bird positioned highest in the frame might be drawn larger in size and overlapping other smaller birds lower in the frame. In both scenarios, overlapping still trumps all the other Nine Laws.
7. Continue drawing the vertical sides down for the lowest row of towers.
8. Concentrate on overlapping, drawing the important peeking lines down from each and every foreshortened circle.
ì
LESSON 11: ADVANCED-LEVEL CYLINDERS
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CAUTION: Avoid drawing the sides of two
towers lining up like this:
If this happens, go ahead and erase the
edge and part of one of the foreshortened cir-
cles. Extend the erased foreshortened circle a
smidge—just enough to ensure that it is over-
lapping behind or in front of the other tower.
This idea of “offsetting” objects just enough
so that the edge lines don’t merge is a very
small but helpful tip to put in your drawing
toolbox.
9. Complete all the towers, moving from the
lowest in the frame to the highest.
NOTE: There is one small problem you
may encounter as you are drawing the towers.
There’s a tendency for your drawing hand to
smear the lower towers as you move over
them to draw the higher towers. A simple
practical solution to this is to place a small
piece of clean scratch paper over the com-
pleted portio
n of your drawing, place your
hand on the scratch paper, and draw the next
row. Then pick up the scratch paper and repo-
sition it higher. Do not push the scratch paper with your drawing hand to reposition it. I use
î
this scratch-paper-shielding technique in
every pencil and ink illustration I create.
Begin your nook and cranny shadows at
the top, and work your way down using your
scratch-paper shielding. You want to avoid
smearing your drawing during this detail
phase. I can’t tell you how many nearly com-
plete thirty-hour illustrations I have totally
smeared by drawing a final detail near the top
of the frame. Avoid smearing!
10. Complete the blended shading on the
remaining towers.
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Lesson 11: Bonus Challenge
After that “towering success” (pun fully intended), let’s reverse the exercise to practice foreshortened circles, size, placement, shading, shadow, and thickness. Let’s draw a field of holes. Because these foreshortened circles are on “top” of the ground, the thickness of these holes will be at the top of the foreshortened circle. This is a fun challenge. Enjoy!
LESSON 11: ADVANCED-LEVEL CYLINDERS
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Student examples
Look at how these students stretched their imagination and drawing skill.
By Tracy Powers
By Michael Lane
By Ann Nelson
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L E S S O N 1 2
CONSTRUCTING
WITH CUBES
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Let’s recap where we are in this thirty-day journey. You’ve mastered drawing spheres, multiple spheres, and stacked spheres all with blended shading. You have learned how to draw the cube, cube variations, multiple layered-cube buildings, and towers of tables and, most importantly, how to apply the drawing compass directions: northwest, southwest, northeast, and southeast. You will now use these skills to draw more real-world objects. In this chapter, you’ll start by drawing a house; then you’ll draw a mailbox.